Even Thai Girls Cry

by J. F. Gump

  “Khun Mike?” she asked, surprise filled her voice. “Yes, I remember you. I am very happy to hear from you. Are you okay? How have you been?”

  “Actually, I am not well. I need your help. I need your help very much. Can you help me, Daeng?”

  “If I can, I will help you, Mike,” she replied. “What do you want me to do?”

  He explained everything. He told her about Math, he told her about Anan, and he told her about the lady at the hospital. He told her over and over until he was sure she understood.

  “Tomorrow,” Daeng promised, “I will go to the hospital and see for myself. Khun Mike, I am very much worried because some Thai people are not honest. I want to be sure 100% about your friend Math, before you send money to Anan. Maybe he is not honest man. Please do not be angry for me to say that, but I know how some Thai people are.”

  “I understand, Daeng,” he said, “and I am not angry. I understand. Thank you for your help. I will call you tomorrow. Okay?”

  “Is okay, Mike,” Daeng answered. “I will take care everything. Goodbye for now, Mike.”

  “Goodbye, Daeng,” he said and hung up the phone.

  The money, he thought franticly, where do I get the fucking money? With Susan’s spending and his regular bills and the retainer he had paid the lawyer, he barely had two quarters to rub together. How could he come up with that much money on a minute’s notice? He pulled out his wallet and eyed the credit cards. Dear God, he said to himself, please let one of these be worth something. On his way out of the office he told Laura he didn’t feel well and was going home. She nodded her understanding.

  It took three of his four credit cards to get all of the cash, but by one o’clock that afternoon it was done. If Susan said anything about him taking loans on the credit cards, he would tell her to go fuck herself. He figured he would be inheriting the debt soon enough anyway.

  Mike started to go home then changed his mind. He was too emotionally stressed to go home and deal with the Susan and Josh and all of the bullshit that went on around his house. He just couldn’t do it, not today. Today he needed solitude and something to calm his nerves.

  He stopped at a redneck joint not far from his home. The place was seedy but the beer was cheap. He sat by himself drinking beer and thinking about Math. Images of her lying in a hospital bed kept parading through his head. The sad country music on the jukebox matched his mood. After his fourth beer he broke down and cried for the first time since he had received the fax.

  “Are you okay?” the barmaid asked.

  “Bring me another beer,” was his reply.

  He stayed there drinking and thinking and crying until the barmaid finally refused to serve him. He stumbled out of the bar so drunk he could hardly walk. So drunk that nothing mattered to him. Not even his own life.

  He drove with one eye closed because, when he opened them both, he saw two of everything. Two roads, two street signs, and two sets of headlights coming toward him. He knew he shouldn’t be driving but he didn’t care. Recklessly, he drove off the edge of the pavement and nearly hit another car head-on, when he pulled back onto the road. He found the whole thing hilarious and laughed until he cried. In a while, only his laughter had stopped.

  It was eight thirty when he arrived at his house. He vomited heavily in his driveway, then went inside and up the stairs. He passed out in the guest bedroom. If anyone said anything to him, he didn’t notice. He slept like the dead.

  Mike woke up at five o’clock the next morning. His stomach was queasy and his head felt like it might explode at any minute. He forced himself out of bed. It was going to be a long day. He was showered, dressed and out of the house by six-thirty. Susan didn’t get up and he didn’t wake her. He stopped at a Seven-Eleven store and bought a breakfast sandwich, a carton of milk, and a bottle of aspirin. As he drove, he ate the sandwich, then chewed up five aspirins and forced them down with the milk.

  He was forty-five minutes early for work and the first one to arrive. There were no messages for him on the answering machine but there was a fax from Anan. It contained his bank name and account number but no routing number.

  “Damn you, Anan,” he shouted out aloud. He went to his office and called Daeng.

  “Hello.” She answered on the first ring.

  “Hello, Daeng,” he said. “It’s me, Mike. What did you find out?”

  “It is not good news. The people at the hospital confirmed to me what they told you yesterday. The doctors say Math will die. It is not a problem with money. She have much bleeding inside her head. It is too late for operation already. I am sorry about your lady, Mike.”

  Her words struck Mike like an emotional pile driver. “Did you see her?”

  “Yes,” Daeng answered, “She looked very beautiful and very perfect. She looked like she was sleeping except for the things in her nose and her mouth. Did you receive a fax from the hospital?”

  “No,” he replied numbly, his eyes filled with tears, “I received only a fax from Math’s brother. What is the fax from the hospital?”

  “I asked the hospital to send you a fax about your friend’s condition. I will tell them again tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, Daeng,” he said. “Thank you for helping. I need you to do two more things for me, if you would.”

  “What is that,” she asked.

  “I need you to check with the hospital every day and send me a fax when Math dies. Also, I want you to call Math’s brother and tell him I cannot send money because he did not give me all of the information I need.” He gave her Anan’s number.

  “I will do that for you, Mike,” she said. “Please, you take care of yourself, okay?”

  “I will, Daeng,” he answered listlessly. “I will.”

  Mike struggled through the day trying to act as if nothing was wrong, as if nothing was happening inside his head. The stares he got from his co-workers told him he was not succeeding. Finally, at three o’clock in the afternoon, he went home.

  He was relieved no one was there. He was physically and emotionally exhausted. He turned to his old friend alcohol to numb his pain. Within an hour he had drank an entire six-pack of beer. He was grateful when his exhaustion allowed him to sleep. Neither Susan nor Josh woke him that night.

  On Friday, Mike was up and out of the house before anyone else was awake. He skipped breakfast and went straight to work. Laura was already there, but she would not look directly at him. She handed him two faxes. One was from the hospital and the other was from Daeng. He carried them to his desk. He read the hospital fax first.

  “Tippawan Bongkot was admitted to the hospital at 12:00 noon with a history of a motorcycle accident. She had one compound fractured rib and a contusion above her left eye. She was semi-conscious. Two hours after arriving, her condition changed to complete unconsciousness. A CAT scan was performed. It revealed heavy intra-cranial hemorrhaging. The patient displays dolls-eye reaction to deep pain. The insurance company has refused to pay anything and, as of this time, the family has not paid for an operation. Current diagnosis is brain death condition and the patient will likely die in one or two days.’

  Brain death condition, the patient will die in one or two days. Mike repeated the words over and over as images of Math dying in a hospital bed invaded his head. A small whimper escaped his mouth. He laid the fax down and picked up the one from Daeng. Instinctively, he knew he did not want to read it. It was very short.

  “Math died today at 12:00 noon, Thailand time. All of my sympathies are with you, Mike. Love, Daeng.”

  He got up and left the office, just as his whimpering sobs exploded into gut wrenching wails of grief. He stopped in the toilet and threw up until nothing but dry heaves remained. He left the building, got into his car, and drove from the parking lot.

  He didn’t know where he was going and he didn’t care. He just wanted to run away and hide. Hide from the
awful searing pain that was wracking his very soul. All of his hopes and dreams had vanished with the arrival of those two worthless pieces of paper. His life, as he planned it, had just ended.

  As he drove, he realized he would never see Math smile again. Thoughts of her played through his mind like an endless video. With crystal clarity he could hear her saying “Hello, teeluk, I am Math”, as if he could not recognize her voice on the phone. Her odd way of saying “in quickly time” instead of soon. He could see the way her face lit up when she was happy or very proud. The way her lower lip pouted when she was upset or angry. The way she cried when she was sad. He could almost feel her hand on his, soft and gentle. He could almost hear her voice saying, “I love you, Mike. Please come back to me in quickly time.” Never again would he see her face or hear her voice or feel the touch of her hand. Never again would Mike ever love anyone the way he had loved Math.

  An ugly thought entered his mind. He had killed her. He was the one who had told her to go to Pattaya. If she hadn’t been there, she would not have had the accident. Except for him, she would still be alive. Cold, sharp blades of guilt sliced through him. He had killed the one thing he loved more than anything else in the world. Without warning, tears erupted from his eyes like torrents of blinding rain. He pulled to the side of the road. As he sat there crying, dark thoughts of suicide ravaged his mind. It would be so easy and the pain would end in quickly time.

  Suddenly, he heard Math speaking to him. It sounded so real, as if she was in the car with him. “Please take care of yourself, Mike. Take care of yourself and your family. Chan lak khun, teeluk. I love you, sweetheart. Chan lak khun talod bai. I will love you forever.” Her words eased his soul. He looked around, almost expecting to see her, but he was alone.

  At that moment he knew he had one more thing he must do, and then what happened with his life was up to fate. He had to make one more trip to Thailand to say goodbye to Math. He knew if he didn’t do that, his soul would die as surely as the sun would rise tomorrow. His tears slowed and he turned back toward his office. As he drove, he made plans for his journey to say goodbye to Math.

  When he walked back into his office, everyone stared but no one said anything. He wrote two faxes, one to Anan and one to Daeng.

  “I am very sorry about what has happened to Math,” his fax to Anan read. “I can feel your pain. You will never understand how much I loved your sister. You will never know how much I hurt inside. Please say a prayer for Math from me at her funeral. I will be coming to Thailand, as I had already planned with Math. I would like very much to have a Buddhist sympathy ceremony for Math to pay my own last respects and to tell her goodbye. If you can help me, I would be forever grateful. I will pay for everything. If your sister, Nuang, can join with us, I would be very pleased and happy to see her again. My thoughts and my sympathies are with you and your family. Mike.”

  To Daeng he wrote. “I am coming to Thailand in less than six weeks. I have asked Math’s brother, Anan, to help me arrange a sympathy ceremony for Math. Please contact Anan and make sure he has received my fax and then tell me if he will do what I have asked of him. Thank you for your help and kindness. Your friend. Mike.”

  He sent the faxes, then left the office.

  Mike went home and did something he hadn’t done for a long time. He rolled two marijuana cigarettes and smoked them both, one after the other. It dulled his senses and took the sharp cutting edges from his pain. In a while he lay down and dreamed of Math, alive, happy, and smiling.

  In the morning he again had two faxes. One was from Anan and the other was from Daeng. Everything would be arranged as he had requested. He sent a note of thanks to both, and promised to send his travel details once they were final.

  The next few weeks were weeks from hell. Mike was emotionally devastated. He struggled through each day, merely going through the motions of living. After the first week he cried only once in a while. Usually it was at night, when he was alone and had too much time to think and too much beer to drink. His appetite disappeared and during those six weeks he lost nearly ten pounds. But he survived and, finally, the day for him to go back to Math had arrived.

  Chapter 33

  It was the longest airplane ride Mike had ever taken. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t sleep. His thin-padded, coach-class seat felt only slightly better than a rigid, straight-backed, church pew. He had traveled coach before, but he couldn’t remember the seats being this uncomfortable. Maybe they weren’t any harder, maybe he was only imagining it.

  He sat there in his coach-class torture chamber, staring at the back of the seat in front of him. He ignored the movies showing on the screen just a few feet from his face. Instead, his mind replayed scenes from the last year of his life. From time to time he would shake his head ever so slightly and sigh. All the stupid clichés he had ever heard entered his head at one time or another during the flight. Life is a bitch and then you die, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, there’s a silver lining behind every gray cloud, and all of the rest of the bullshit. Probably the most inane of the bunch was ‘It’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all’. Whoever said that was the biggest fool of all. Obviously they had never lost someone like Math.

  He arrived in Bangkok at eleven thirty at night. He knew the routine with the taxis, and getting transportation to Pattaya was not a problem. It was very late when he arrived at the condo.

  He hadn’t been here for many months, yet he was treated as if it was yesterday. Even at that late hour the manager, Jem, came to greet him. Everything was ready for him even though he had made no reservations. He was dumbfounded at the reception.

  “Your friend, Daeng, from work, called and told us you would be arriving tonight,” Jem said. “We have missed your company. We could not save you the same room you had before, but I have given you the best room we have available.” She looked around. “Where is your friend, Math? You know, the girl who lived with you before. She is a very nice young lady. She stopped by not long ago to ask about rooms.”

  “Math is dead,” he answered, more bluntly than he intended.

  “Please don’t joke,” Jem said. “Your joke is not fun.”

  “It is not a joke, Jem.” he said much softer. “She was killed in a motorcycle accident just a few weeks ago.”

  “Oh, Mike,” she said, “I am very sorry for you. She was such a wonderful person. She told me she loved you very much and that you would be married soon.”

  His voice choked at her words and he couldn’t answer right away. He finished filling out the reservation form then responded, “Yes, we were to be married soon.”

  The boy at the desk handed Mike his room key.

  “I can find the room on my own. I need a wake up call at seven. Please tell the boy what I need.”

  Jem nodded her agreement and spoke in Thai to the boy. The boy nodded his understanding. “Is there anything else I can do?” she asked.

  “You can say a prayer for her soul in her new life,” Mike answered. “That would be very nice.”

  “I will,” she said. “I will say a prayer for her spirit.”

  Mike picked up his suitcase and went to his room. He wished he had the same room as when he and Math had lived together, but he didn’t. Still, the room was similar and comfortable. He lay in the bed and thought about Math. He was extremely tired and couldn’t maintain his focus. In ten minutes he was asleep.

  That night he dreamt he was in Pattaya and Math was with him. She felt so close. He could hear her breathing softly beside of him, he could feel her warmth, he could smell her perfume.

  Mike awoke to the sun shining through the curtains. He opened his eyes expecting to find Math beside him, but there was only a pillow. He looked at his watch. It was nine-thirty. He vaguely remembered getting a seven o’clock wake up call and just as vaguely remembered falling back asleep.

  He took a quick sho
wer and called Anan. They agreed to meet in the condo lobby at eleven.

  At 10:30 Mike went to the lobby. He knew he should eat but he ordered a Carlsberg beer instead. His body was telling him it was ten-thirty at night, regardless of what his watch and the sun said. By eleven he was on his second beer. Anan arrived ten minutes late. He had Nuang with him.

  “Good morning, sir,” Anan said politely in English.

  “Sawasdee ka, Khun Mike,” Nuang said wai’ing to him.

  “Sawasdee krup, Anan. Sawasdee krup, Nuang,” Mike answered in Thai. “I am happy to see both of you again. Please sit down.”

  Nuang giggled as she sat.

  Mike tilted his head and stared at her. He hoped he had not said something stupid. “Is my Thai wrong?” he asked.

  “Oh no, your Thai words are very good,” Nuang giggled again and pointed at the Carlsberg. “Math said you like to drink beer too much. She never told me you had beer for breakfast.”

  “Oh, that; I guess it is a little early, isn’t it?” he said, slightly embarrassed. He changed the subject. “Would you like something to drink or eat?” Anan and Nuang declined his offer.

  “I have arranged everything for the ceremony,” Anan said. “It will be at my house tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock. I hope that is not too early.”

  “That would be fine,” Mike replied. “I am not familiar with Buddhist ceremonies and Thai customs. I want to show respect. Is there anything special I need to do? How should I dress?”

  “Do not worry, sir,” Anan said. “You can wear whatever clothes you want. If you have a white shirt and black pants, that would be very polite, but it is not important. There will be a man at the ceremony to tell you everything you must do. You don’t worry, okay?”

  “Thank you,” Mike said. “I appreciate everything you are doing to arrange this ceremony for me. You are very kind. How much does all of this cost?”

  Anan told Mike how much he had spent for the monks, the flowers, the food, and everything. Mike gave Anan the money. It was a small amount to pay for what he would receive in return. He would have paid ten times the cost to show his honor for Math.